AN INCURABLE INSANITY
by Simi K. Rao
KIRKUS REVIEW
In Rao’s debut novel, an arranged Indian marriage sets the stage for an intimate look at the exasperating madness of love.
Shaan Ahuja and Ruhi Sharma’s arranged marriage has an inauspicious start. Shaan spurns his new wife on their wedding night, still pining over the American lover he left back in Los Angeles. However, the begrudging spouses soon make a pact: Ruhi will stay with Shaan in the United States just long enough to avoid embarrassment. The young bride hopes she can use the time to win Shaan’s heart, and although Ruhi’s beauty and attentiveness do change Shaan’s feelings, his immaturity and inability to express himself—and Ruhi’s lingering mistrust—keep them from reconciling. As they attempt to be “friends without benefits,” they start to reveal their true selves, including her needling puckishness and independent spirit and the reasons for his reserved nature and impulsive jealousy. Their eventual reconciliation comes not from forgiveness but from acceptance and understanding. The novel trades in a certain amount of melodrama that, thanks to its light tone, comes across as indulgent but satisfying. Both main characters are highly animated, with hand-wringing, exasperated gestures and barely restrained outbursts. The novel seems highly aware of its influences, using cultural expectations and delayed gratification in the same spirit, if not with the same deftness, as Jane Austen. Shaan and Ruhi also sometimes mirror the star-crossed lovers from Casablanca (a film that the book directly references). The intense focus on the troubled pair’s relationship, however, takes away from the novel’s other aspects; its settings, including Chandigarh, India, Las Vegas and LA seem sparse and shapeless, their rich cultures highly subdued. The supporting cast, although intriguing, is also underused; in particular, Shaan’s energetic friend Sujoy and the endearing, elderly Sunshine make too few appearances despite the novel’s considerable length.
An often intoxicating, if narrowly focused, will-they-or-won’t-they tale.
Pub Date:Oct. 8th, 2013
Page count:348pp
Publisher:Tate Publishing
Program:Kirkus Indie
Review Posted Online:Sept. 5th, 2013
THE LIGHT CHANGES
by Amy Billone
KIRKUS REVIEW
Moving, psychologically nuanced free verse on death, rebirth and the powerfully generative potential of loss.
Billone’s debut poetry collection opens with the distinctly violent thud of metal on flesh: “I was raped by a speeding train. I asked it to. / I threw myself before it….Oh what enormous / metal thighs. Oh what fast thudding hips. Again / again against my blackening eyes, skull, chest, waist.” The rattle of crushing bones reverberates through this volume as Billone revisits again and again this vivid moment of loss, of clarity and of new beginnings. For all the isolation this act of surrender implies, Billone’s narrator seems as concerned about the repercussions for her father as for herself. Recently emerged from a coma, she peers from the buzzing confines of her damaged skull and notices his small discomforts: “Now almost dead I wake to feel him stroke / my hand with his weary feet in buckets / full of ice.” Though headed by epigraphs drawn from Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Barrett Browning—their influences here are undeniable—this volume’s insistent attention to self-violence, suffused with a complex longing for, and yet wariness of, paternal blessing begs for comparison to Sylvia Plath, a comparison in which Billone more than holds her own. Poems such as “Invitation from a Carnival after a Storm,” “Paris to London” and “If Nothing Else” demonstrate her ability to convey a rich, fraught sensuality with sharply lucid verse. Like Plath, she evokes a father both omnipotent—one who can tear down her “tiny words” with “bare / gigantic / father arms / overwhelming”—and omnipresent, a hovering, suffocating presence whose “terrified eyes” and “gasping face” may have been prescient or may have pushed the narrator to attempt suicide. Unlike Plath, however, she learns—from her father’s fears, from that thudding train and from her late mentor, the poet Jack Gilbert—to savor the profound intensity of approaching loss. As her attention moves from her own recovery to the birth of her son, she cherishes each exquisite moment preceding the loss of their shared bodies: “My God, I have never loved / anything as much as these / ripples inside me.” Indeed, in this tightly woven exploration of how to hold onto something important amid constant change and loss, the “gray light changes / will change // is changing now / as it always does.”
Thrilling in its courageousness, breathtaking in its vividness.
Pub Date:June 5th, 2013
ISBN:978-0989074001
Page count:78pp
Publisher:Hope Street Press
Program:Kirkus Indie
Review Posted Online:Sept. 12th, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue:Oct. 15th, 2013
HYPOTHYROIDISM, HEALTH, & HAPPINESS - The Riddle of Illness Revealed/b>
by Steven F. Hotze, M.D.
KIRKUS REVIEW
A physician argues that undiagnosed hypothyroidism is the cause of many common medical conditions.
Hotze (Hormones, Health, and Happiness: A Natural Medical Formula for Rediscovering Youth with Bioidentical Hormones, 2007), the director of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, a Texas clinic that specializes in treating thyroid conditions, convincingly argues that the thyroid gland plays a vital role in overall well-being. After studying the issue for more than 20 years, he has condensed his findings into an accessible guide. The thyroid gland, located in the neck, affects everything from metabolism to mental health. The author argues that an overlooked epidemic of hypothyroidism is responsible for some of today’s most commonly treated medical conditions. The reason for this medical mistake is twofold. First, the overly broad test used to diagnose thyroid conditions misses many abnormalities. Second, a heavy reliance on synthetic rather than naturally produced thyroid-replacement drugs actually prevents many patients from correcting their thyroid imbalances. Much of the book criticizes modern medicine, from doctors who are beholden to drug companies to a system that relies too heavily on received wisdom. These criticisms, and the facts that Hotze provides to support them, are shocking. Regardless of how intrigued readers are by the author’s hypotheses, they will question the quality of their health care. The rest of the text includes explanations of hypothyroidism and case studies of patients. At times, the work reads like an extended advertisement for the author’s clinic, but the evidence—written plainly for patients with wide-ranging medical issues—is convincing. The book is frustratingly free of dissenting opinions, but even those readers unconvinced that thyroid therapy is a cure-all may want to get their thyroids tested.
Anyone dealing with a medical mystery will be intrigued by the author’s conclusions on the importance of healthy thyroid function.
Pub Date:June 15th, 2013
ISBN:978-1599323961
Page count:278pp
Publisher:Advantage Media Group
Program:Kirkus Indie
Review Posted Online:Oct. 30th, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue:Jan. 1st, 2014
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